


first contact

by unfortunatelyearnest



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, wedding fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29454672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfortunatelyearnest/pseuds/unfortunatelyearnest
Summary: wedding fic drabble. this was going to be a tumblr post but it got long and I didn’t feel like making people choose to read or scroll past. I really have no idea how this side of the site works so I’m doing a bad job with tags and things I think already but I guess that’s the learning curve. Kind of about the disappearance of the handprint in 5.22 kind of just about them being in love
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	first contact

Dean had referenced the handprint in his vows — an admonishment of the fact that Cas got to meet Dean first. Cas is sure there’s an implied innuendo about getting to have his way with Dean before Dean was able to appreciate the effort, but he’s not going to step in to clarify the reality of just how heady his resurrection had been. Instead, he waits until they’re stumbling out of Garth’s car and up the front steps of the bed and breakfast they’ll be staying the next three nights. Jack’s with Donna and Jody and the girls, and Sam and Eileen told them to leave the roadhouse cleanup to the people who will manage to get out of bed before eleven tomorrow. It’s the first moment they’ve had alone practically all night.

Dean can tell he’s got something to say, steering them to the porch swing instead of the front door. He pulls Cas along by his wrist and practically into his lap, angling so he can rock them with his left foot.

“When I healed you after we stopped the apocalypse — ” the first time, you never forget your first. It still was The Apocalypse, what followed after an unspooling of the world as it had been. In a way, they never really did stop it, if stopping meant putting things back together. Everything they had done merely led into new, grander ways for it to fall apart. They seemed to have a knack for that sort of victory. “ — I never told you why I took the handprint.”

The look on his face tells him Dean has some potential answers in mind, but he stays quiet.

“I — nothing could have prepared me to touch your soul. I knew the mission was important, of course — pull the righteous man from hell before there was nothing left. Many of us were expected to die. It’s hard to remember — when I was an angel, I always knew that I would save you. It was god’s will. But when I reached you, when I gathered up the pieces that were left — ”

Dean winces at that. He’s done a good job hiding his memories of hell the past few years, but Cas knows they’re still there, papered over with new traumas, not healed so much as scarred over. He lives with them. Cas can’t do much else except be here when it’s hard.

“I couldn’t — it was more than I had ever felt. It was not god. No god would ever compare to what I held, what I clung to as I pulled you out. And I — I needed you to know. I was remaking you, but I was creating you. It was blasphemy bound by duty. And I had to give you something you would understand.”

Cavemen had pressed their soot covered hands to cavern walls. Thomas had slipped his fingers into Jesus’s side. And Castiel, still an angel of the Lord, had pressed his grace into the impression of a palm. Which Dean had seen and freaked the fuck out because Cas couldn’t help but go overboard and then furthered the weirdness by trying to speak with him in angelic frequencies, already so enamored with this small, fragile life. Certain above anything that Dean would be able to hear him, never pausing to consider whether that was logic or desire speaking. Before he was even alive again, Dean taught Cas to be ravenous. 

“When Chuck brought me back after Sam threw himself in the pit, I felt shame. I felt — I was free, but freedom came at a cost. And you bore that cost above all. And I remembered stitching you together, skimming over every callus, every scrape — and I was guilty. I had marked you. I hadn’t — I was in love with you the moment I touched you. But I didn’t know that until the shame. Until I was losing you. I knew you would go back to Lisa and I couldn’t give you to her with my brand — a claim. I was angel who claimed a human soul, not as a vessel but just. You. It was my gift to you. To do right what I got wrong the first time.”

Dean is quiet for a long moment. Cas can read his face like a book when Dean lets him, and he sees him gathering his thoughts, reviewing their history. Finding the handprint that first day alive, assuming, as he was wont to do, it to be the mark of a demon who got a joyride out of hell in his meat suit. Getting healed, helpless and bloodied on his knees, grief souring triumph in his mouth. He might not have even felt the change, not noticed until getting undressed that night. And then. The Empty. Cas had pushed him away and left another. He’d seen it on the jacket Dean had been wearing when he pulled him out. It would have made him laugh if he wasn’t gasping for air, lungs kicking in like a crying newborn. “Fuck’s sake Cas, I would have brought an inhaler if I knew becoming human triggers angel asthma,” and Dean says it because they have to rib each other to show their love, but he’s holding him close and trying to match his breathing, show him the ropes. Dean was the one who asked that he breathe more convincingly in his vessel, told him people found the absence of a clear rise and fall in his chest unsettling. And now Dean had helped him learn to breathe for real.

Dean strokes a hand through his hair, leaving it resting on Cas’s neck, scratching gently there, the cool metal of his wedding band standing out against the warmth. It’s a feeling Cas could get used to.

“I love you.” It’s how Dean begins a lot of his statements lately. It’s what Cas heard that woke him from what should have been an endless sleep. It really was that simple. Some of the movies Cas watched with Jack talked about true love’s kiss, but the kiss came after Cas was floundering back on earth. It would have been odd, to say the least, to wake up with Dean’s lips on his own — he would have assumed it to be vision meant to torture him. On earth it was too good to be a dream.

“I thought for a while the handprint was just part of the whole resurrection schtick. Like, you ‘gripped me tight,’ right? So duh, hands. It was, uh, it felt good. It always felt good. I didn’t — I knew you put it there, but I didn’t think about that part of it too much. Just that it was proof I had survived. The hell hound scratches would have been gnarly, but it’s what I was used to. Just. Everything I knew left something on me like that. And then they were gone and the only thing was you. But it was also kind of fucked up, because like, well, it was you but I thought it was heaven. Like some sort of Michael Sword Official Stamp, that I was examined by the dealer and the goods were legit. So when it was gone... felt weird. And then Sam came back and he just didn’t have one and I felt SUPER weird, but I didn’t really have time to figure that out because the whole soulless thing was a little more important, and then — well, all the shit happened that always happens to us. You were god and you were dead and I was so fucking mad at you, but I was also mad that you took it. You were just. Gone. And all I had was that damn coat.”

He pulls Cas’s head to his chest, exhaling sharply. “Fuck. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t hold you now, Cas.”

It was late before they started talking and it’s getting later. As important as this is, Cas knows they’ll both be dozing off soon enough and they should get upstairs, if not to have sex at least to prevent a scene in the morning.

“Dean, I’m glad you asked me to marry you.”

Dean snorts at that. “Good to hear you aren’t planning on running for the hills already.”

“I mean it, Dean. I watched so many cupids in heaven go down to earth to pair off couples who would have never looked up at each other otherwise. It was so... messy. And I just never questioned it, the meddling. It was all the grand design. Marriages were convenient, bloodlines needed to be maintained or merged. Human festivities — it was all so frivolous. But sometimes it was. There was something. Or there were pieces that didn’t matter as much, where people just got together. It wasn’t always for the best but it was admirable. They had no one looking out for them but they thought they could do it. They didn’t have any reason to think otherwise.”

Cas pulls back to look at Dean, noses almost touching.

“I never needed a wedding to be sure you loved me. But it feels right. Like we did something just for ourselves. Like we finally get a happy ending.” Maybe the princess movies had a point there.

Dean bridges the distance with a kiss, tender. It doesn’t last long but it leaves Cas breathless. He’s kissing his husband.

“After I left Lisa,” Dean’s looking down at where they’ve joined hands, fingers woven together, “I kind of had given up on marriage. It seemed like something that was just so small. Fucked me up, knowing practically all dad wanted was for me to settle down with some girl and have grandkids. Like that was going to be so easy after all the shit he put us through. But uh, it helped that there was never much time to mourn that. Hunting’s hunting; you don’t get too close to people, you probably save a few more lives. I wasn’t giving up, I was making a choice. It was about the world, it wasn’t about me. I don’t know — when I asked you, it didn’t even think about it. That I had put it away and it was just. There. Sprung right to the front of my mind just that I wanted to marry you. And I know it won’t hold up in court or church or synagogue or whatever, but all those people? It’s worth it for that. I got to show them that I love you. That I was so fucking in love with you I couldn’t stand it. It took me so fucking long, but we made it here. And now we have something to show for it that neither of us had to bleed for.”

Cas pulls Dean’s face up between his hands and strokes his cheek, which earns him a warm smile. He can remember everything they bled for clear as crystal. It was the only time they could touch like this, longing colored by violence and desperation. Every time they do it now tips the scales toward their new future together, where touch is soft. Well, it doesn’t have to be, but it’s done with care. Curious, Cas pulls off with one hand and places it gently onto Dean’s shoulder. Before even a word passed between them, Cas had given himself to Dean. And now they had given themselves to each other.


End file.
